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The Help Analysis

Decent Essays

The film and also novel that I chose is The Help. The award winning film is based during the civil rights movement where an aspiring author decides to write a book. Throughout the movie Skeeter (the writer and one of the main characters) watches the lives of black women who work for white families. She then writes a book about all of the experiences they have had and even what she saw and turned it into a book. The book was based on African American maids’ point of view on the white families they worked, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis. I chose this film because it shows an excellent example on how gender, race and class fell into place during the 1960s and how these women and some of the men were treated. Although today …show more content…

With every middle-class white family came a African-American “help”, a maid who was a lot more than a mere maid, so that the white women didn’t have to work. The white women were repulsed by the color of the skin of the women who worked for them, but they were fine with handing over their kids for them to care for. The snobby middle-class women took advantage of the fact that they were the source of money and food so they worked the women all day and sometimes all night. Although, one of the white middle-class wives did treat her maid fairly and with love and respect not all were that way. There, was also a stereotype shown of the white men and how they treated the maids. In one of the scenes Minny (a maid) was coming back with groceries for Celia. Minny noticed that Celia’s husband was coming up the driveway and started to run. In this scene it shows the fear that she had for this wealthy man and was concerned that he was going to hurt her, even though he was a good man it just gives insight that many wealthy men have hurt the “help” because of the certain power they have. This movies shows that the stereotypes following class, do reinforce cultural stereotypes then and sometimes now, just different …show more content…

It shows discrimination, racism, sexism, and misogyny all throughout this movies, which isn’t there to tell stories, but to show the harsh reality of what was going on during that time. The film came out in 2014 and people then could even see similar characteristics and relate them to our everyday lives and things that we see on the news. The Help relates so much to intersectionality and shows its true importance in the message it is giving out and the importance of it. The point isn’t to favor women in this film, but to just shed light onto what was going on and what is still going on in the certain

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